Supporters of José Manuel Mireles Valverde, the imprisoned leader of the "community police" self-defense forces in Mexico's violence-torn Michoacán state, are holding a protest mobilization to demand his release. The biggest rally so far took place Aug. 31 in Hermosillo, Sonora, where he is being held in a maximum-security prison. Mireles was the one significant leader of the "community police" movement who refused to accept the government's deal to bring the vigilante militias under the control of the official security forces. He was arrested by state and federal police on June 27 at the Michoacán pueblo of La Mira, and charged with narcotics and arms trafficking. His legal team says the evidence against him was fabricated, and that he was tortured while in detention. In announcing the protest campaign, his lawyers and supporters said they would file complaints about his treatment with the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and United Nations. They say that Mireles, a longtime activist who ran for Mexico's senate with the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 2006, is really being punished for refusing to go along with the "community police" movement being integrated into official police and military forces themselves deeply co-opted by the drug cartels. (El Impercial, Hermosillo, Sept. 1; La Jornada, Aug. 31; El Universal, Aug. 29; AM de Queretaro, Aug. 26; Milenio, Aug. 19; El Siglo, Durango, Aug. 12; Excelsior, Jan. 17)

Instagram has been blocked in mainland China since Sept. 28, in an evident attempt to stop images of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong as street clashes entered their third day. Following repression of the massive Occupy Central demonstration, thousands of people have remained on the streets of Hong Kong, defying tear gas and ignoring orders to disperse. Overnight, riot police advanced on crowds who ignored official warnings that the demonstrations were illegal. In what can be read as a veiled threat, Hong Kong's chief executive CY Leung reassured the public that rumors the Chinese army might intervene are untrue. (Shanghaiist, Sept. 29; BBC News, Sept. 28)

Guerillas affiliated with the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) have for the past days been clashing with Iranian military forces in the area of Shino (Oshnavieh, West Azerbaijan province), leaving a senior army commander dead.  Iran's official media on Sept. 26 confirmed the killing of the commander, named as Sajad Takhti, by the guerilla force known as the Peshmerga of Iranian Kurdistan. The PDKI also confirmed that one of their fighters has been killed  in the area. Fighting is also reported in the Kurdish city of Mariwan (Kordistan province) on the border of Iran and Iraq's Kurdistan Region. (BasNews, Sept. 27)

The US-led coalition launched its first air-strikes targeting ISIS positions on the outskirts of the besieged Kurdish town of Kobani on Sept. 27, according to local officials. The strike follows a week-long ISIS offensive that has driven over 140,000 Syrian Kurds across the Turkish border. Ahmed Sulaiman, an official of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), told Kurdish news agency Rudaw that the mission targeted ISIS forces based at several villages east of Kobani, including Jim-Hiran, Ali-Shar, Mirde Smill and Sheran. The PKK-aligned People's Protection Units (YPG) are defending the town, and have issued a statement vowing to "make Kobani the graveyard of ISIS fighters." (Rudaw, Sept. 27)

The American Justice Center on Sept. 25 filed a class action lawsuit (PDF) on behalf of anonymous survivors against India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York for human rights abuses stemming from the religious riots in Gujarat in 2002. Modi was chief minister of Gujarat when Hindu mobs rioted through Muslim neighborhoods in the state, killing more than 1,000. The lawsuit seeks damages against Modi under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act (PDF).

Armed conflict and forced displacement persist as threats for Colombia's indigenous peoples, according to a new report by the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC). Threats, attacks, killings, forced recruitment, sexual violence and torture remain common in indigenous territories, the group said. One of the most disturbing figures in the report is that between May and June this year 2,819 members of the Dobida Embera community in the western department of Chocó were displaced due to clashes between the ELN guerillas and Urabeños paramilitary force. The UN had previously said that at least 300 locals were forced to flee due to the violence. The report charges: "Despite the orders given by the Constitutional Court of Colombia regarding the protection of at least 64 indigenous people they continue to be at high risk for physical and cultural extermination. This is due to the armed conflict and forced displacement. The nature of the violations reaffirms the ineffective protective measures of the national and international bodies involved."

The Sept. 23 US air-strikes on the so-called "Khorasan Group" near Aleppo on Sept. 23 killed 50 al-Qaeda militants and eight civilians—including three children and a woman—according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Pentagon said the strikes on the Khorasan Group "were undertaken only by US assets," while strikes against ISIS elsewhere in Syria included warplanes from Arab coalition members. (Daily Star, Sept. 23) The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reports that ISIS has recruited more than 6,000 new fighters since the US air-strikes began. One of Washington's favored rebel factions, Harakat Hazm, part of the Free Syrian Army alliance and a recipient of US missiles, issued a statement on Twitter denouncing the "external intervention"—meaning the US-led bombing campaign—as "an attack on the revolution." The group is demanding "unconditional arming" of the Free Syrian Army as an alternative to the air raids. (LAT, Sept. 23; Haaretz, Sept. 19)

The Israeli military's Civil Administration on the West Bank has filed plans for establishing a new settlement in the Jordan Valley, where thousands of Bedouins will be forced to relocate. The Civil Administration is advancing several such plans. The current plan was drawn up without consulting the residents themselves, and is part of the Civil Administration's attempt to concentrate the Bedouins living in the West Bank's Area C in "permanent sites," with a view to annexing most of this area to Israel and leaving it free for settlement expansion. The new settlement for the relocated Bedouin, to be named Ramat Nu'eimeh, will be built in Area C near Jericho, in the Jordan Valley, and is slated to house about 12,500 people from Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley and the Ma'ale Adumim area.